Bargains
by Mariner
Summary: Sam and Dean investigate a missingperson case in North Carolina, and discover that the situation is weird even by Winchester standards.
1. Chapter 1

**Bargains**

**By Mariner**

**Chapter 1**

"So what have we got?" Dean asked.

Sam turned the laptop around on the bedside table so Dean could see the screen from where he was sitting. "Asheville, North Carolina. Janet Macalvie, a nature photographer, vanished on a hike in the Pisgah National Forest one week ago."

"Uh-huh." Dean took another bite of his cold pepperoni pizza -- breakfast of champions, left over from the previous night's dinner of champions -- and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. "And we care because..."

"When I say vanished, I really mean _vanished_. According to the friend she was hiking with, Janet disappeared behind a tree and never appeared again. And get this -- the friend says she heard horses, and 'a musical noise, like bells' right around the same time. Except they were nowhere near the riding trails, and there were no hoof prints or any other kind of mark in the area."

Okay, so that was suitably weird. Dean leaned over to get a better look at the laptop. Sam's browsing had pulled up the website for the _Asheville Citizen-Times_. "Seattle woman lost on nature hike," the lead headline announced. The picture below showed a smiling young woman, blonde and cheerleader-pretty, wearing a Duke University t-shirt.

"That's Janet? She's kinda hot."

Sam rolled his eyes and pulled the laptop back onto his lap. "So what do you think, phantom coach? Headless horseman?"

"Could be either." Dean frowned. "Except that they usually manifest in towns or on open roads. What the hell would a phantom coach be doing in the middle of a national forest? And what's the deal with the bells?"

Sam shrugged. "Won't know until we get there."

* * *

Asheville was a tourist town at the height of tourist season, and accommodations were hard to come by. They were turned away at three motels and two bed-and-breakfasts before lucking out at a place called Bon Paul and Sharky's Hostel, which had a cancellation. Twenty bucks a night got them each a bunk, a set of linens, and access to the kitchen. They had to share the room with two fishermen from Atlanta and two amateur botanists from Charleston, which Dean was kind of annoyed about at first. But the annoyance turned to badly suppressed hilarity when the botanists -- a pair of feisty old ladies in matching sweater sets -- instantly zoomed in on Sam as the focus for all their pent-up maternal instincts. Sam was too skinny; they pressed homemade granola bars and little bags of trail mix on him. He needed a haircut; they lectured him for ten minutes. His clothes were a mess; would he like them to sew up that torn cuff on his jacket? It would only take a minute. Sam endured the fussing for about half an hour before bolting outside. Dean followed, snickering.

"That's it," Sam hissed as soon as they were out of earshot, "we're leaving. We can sleep in the car."

"Aw, come on, Sammy." Dean attempted to muss Sam's hair, and got his arm knocked aside with slightly more force than usual. "I always knew those Bambi eyes of yours were irresistible to women. If you play your cards right, they might take you home with them. Bake you pies. Knit you little booties."

"You're an asshole, you know that? And why aren't they fussing over you? Your clothes are a bigger mess than mine."

"It's my air of manly self-sufficiency. Hey, you think you could give them my blue flannel shirt and say it's yours? The left sleeve is totally coming off."

"Manly self-sufficiency, huh?"

"Sewing isn't manly."

"But walking around with your sleeve half-off is?"

"Sure. It's rugged."

"You mean ragged."

"That, too."

"Right. So is research manly enough for you? 'Cause there's the library."

The Asheville public library had newspaper records on microfiche going back to the 1920s. Dean left Sam digging through those while he sorted through the more recent info on Janet Macalvie's disappearance. Most of it was vague and pointless: police and park rangers still searching, volunteer rescue teams going out, foul play not ruled out but not particularly suspected either. The only useful info he turned up was a name and picture for Janet's hiking buddy -- Catherine Taylor, from Greensboro. Dean photocopied the picture and went to find Sam in the microfiche section.

"Any luck, research boy?"

"Some." Sam leaned back in his chair and held up the pad where he'd been making notes. "Six unsolved disappearances before this one, going back to 1927, all in the same area of the forest. Four women, two men. Three of the cases had no witnesses, but the other three all had people who reported hearing horses and either bells or music around the time of the disappearance. No one's ever seen anything, though, and there's never any physical evidence of horses at the sites."

"Any pattern? To the victims, to the dates, to the witnesses?"

Sam shook his head. "None that I can see. I mean, they were all under thirty-five and pretty good-looking, but other than that, nothing. Different backgrounds, different ethnicities. Some locals, some visitors."

"All right." Dean pulled up a chair and sat down. "So who was the first?"

"Give me a minute." Sam leafed through his notes, frowning. "Margaret Benning. She and her mother were sort of the local medicine women, made up herbal remedies and stuff to sell in town. Went into the woods to gather plants one afternoon and never came back."

"Okay." Dean took the pad from Sam and glanced through it, searching for inspiration in the list of names and dates. "So Margaret and her mother were witches of a sort. Maybe they called something up."

"Maybe." Sam looked dubious. "But what? I really don't think we're dealing with a phantom horseman here, Dean. The signs are all wrong."

"I know." Dean sighed and held up the clipping he'd photocopied. "How about we go see if Catherine Taylor is still in town?"

* * *

Catherine Taylor was still in Asheville, staying at a bed-and-breakfast downtown. She was cute in a geeky sort of way, with frizzy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, and she wore a silver stud in her nose. They found her on the front porch of the bed-and-breakfast, sitting in a wicker chair with one bandaged ankle elevated on a table. A pair of crutches was propped up against the wall behind her. She frowned in obvious confusion at the IDs Dean and Sam presented to her.

"Private investigators?"

"Janet's family hired us." Dean gave her his best "professional tough guy" smile. "They're worried that the local authorities might not be doing enough."

"Ain't that the truth." Catherine scowled angrily. "You'd think they'd all be out in the woods searching, but they wasted three days questioning me, as if I had Janet stowed in the trunk of my car or something. And then they said, 'don't leave town.'" She sniffled and turned away from Sam and Dean for a few moments, blinking rapidly. "Janet's probably lying _dead_ somewhere, and the best they can do is tell me not to leave town. As if I'd--" She sniffled again, more loudly this time, took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes with the back of one hand.

Dean cleared his throat, shuffled his feet, and cast a quick, desperate glance in Sam's direction. He never really knew how to deal when people started crying. Life was so much easier when they just threw punches or tried to arrest him. _Come on, bro, give me some backup here._

"We're very sorry, ma'am." Sam dug a small package of Kleenex from his pocket, peeled a couple of tissues off the top and handed them to Catherine. "It must've been very difficult for you." He paused while she blew her nose and put her glasses back on. "But we're here to do all we can for Janet. If you just talk to us now, we won't have to bother you again."

He met Catherine's watery gaze with his sincere eyes and his kind smile, and Dean could see her pulling herself together, taking a deep breath and resolving to try and be helpful, because how could anyone not try and be helpful to such a nice young man? One day, Dean thought, he would figure out a way to bottle what Sam had, and then all the Winchesters would retire rich.

"There's a nice cafe next door," Catherine said in a voice that only wobbled a little. "Why don't we talk there?"

They sat outside, at a small cast iron table with a huge striped umbrella over it. Sam and Dean ordered sodas and sandwiches, while Catherine got an iced tea and an enormous chocolate cupcake with about an inch of frosting on top. She picked at it listlessly as she told them her story.

"Janet and I were roommates at Duke for four years. Best friends. When we graduated last year, I went back to Greensboro and she got a job in Seattle. She traveled a lot, taking pictures, but we kept in touch. Two weeks ago, she called me up to say she was coming to Pisgah, and would I like to go hiking. So I drove down here to meet her, and we were having a great time, and then..." She stopped, and looked for a moment as if she might start crying again before taking a long sip of her iced tea and composing herself. "I'm sorry. It's been a rough week."

"We understand," Sam said. Dean made what he hoped was a comforting noise.

"What happened on your last hike?" he asked. "The one where Janet disappeared."

Catherine shook her head, looking helpless. "Nothing weird, really. We were following one of the trails near Looking Glass Falls. Janet saw some birds."

"Birds?" Dean repeated blankly. He couldn't imagine what birds might have to do with anything.

"She said they were unusual. Wanted to take pictures of them. So we left the marked trail -- I know we weren't supposed to, but Janet had a compass, and she's always been really good about finding her way. It was -- is -- her job, after all. Going to unmarked places in the wild and taking pictures. We've gone off the trails before, and it was never a problem..." Catherine hunched her shoulders and stared down on her clasped hands on top of the table. "Maybe I should've stopped her, I don't know..."

"It wasn't your fault," Sam said gently. Catherine gave him a small, grateful smile.

"We found a little clearing with a stream running through it," she continued. "The birds Janet wanted were in a tree above the stream. She got a couple of shots with a telephoto lens before they flew off. It was about one in the afternoon by then, so we stayed in the clearing and had ourselves a picnic lunch and then..." She frowned again and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "We fell asleep."

"You _fell asleep_?" Sam blinked at Catherine with a startled expression that, Dean suspected, matched his own. "Both of you?"

"Yeah, it was strange." Catherine shrugged. "I mean, it was a hot day and all, but we hadn't hiked all that far, or eaten all that much. Don't know why we were so tired, but I nearly put my jaw out from all the yawning, and I could see Janet was nodding off too. I was about to suggest we head back, when I just kind of... keeled over."

Well. That was weird. Dean could name a depressingly large number of creatures that put their victims to sleep, usually with the intent of sucking the sleeper's soul out, but none of them were likely to attack in broad daylight in a sunlit forest clearing. Besides, soul eaters generally left the body behind, in some form or another, yet no physical trace of Janet Macalvie has been found after more than a week. Dean stared at the remains of his sandwich and tried to think, but the sight of roast beef and lettuce on whole wheat offered no inspiration.

"Oookay," he muttered, thinking out loud, "so you had your lunch, and you took your nap, and then you woke up because... you heard horses?"

Catherine's face turned pink and her mouth compressed into a thin, hard line. "I'm not making that up!" she snapped. "I really did hear them, and now everyone thinks I'm crazy!"

"We know you're not crazy," Sam said quickly. "We're just trying to get a clear picture of what happened. You're the only witness, so anything you could tell us would be very helpful."

"Right. Of course." Catherine closed her eyes for a moment and took a couple of slow breaths. "I woke up because I heard a noise, but I wasn't sure what it was at first. And I saw Janet -- she was across the stream from me, on the far edge of the clearing. I think she was watching something."

"Could you see what it was?" Dean asked. "Did she seem frightened?"

Catherine shook her head. "I don't know. She had her back to me. I started to call out to her, and that's when I heard the horses."

"And the bells?"

"Yes. It sounded so pretty. I thought maybe that's what Janet was looking at. I wanted to see too. Then she stepped behind a tree, and I couldn't see her anymore. And I heard her scream." She closed her eyes again and shivered a little. "I ran to her, but I slipped in the stream and twisted my ankle. By the time I got over there, she was gone. And she left her camera, lying there in the grass. She never went anywhere without that camera..."

"We're sorry," Dean muttered as Sam handed over yet another tissue. Catherine pushed her glasses up to her forehead and dabbed at her eyes.

"I wish I could be more helpful," she said, "but I really didn't see anything. I know what I heard, though."

"What happened to Janet's camera?" Dean asked.

Catherine frowned. "The police still have it. They developed the film. And you know what they said? There were no pictures of birds anywhere on the roll. Nothing but trees and sky. They think I made that part up, too. They think I made everything up."

"We know you didn't." Sam dug through his backpack, coming up with a trail map he spread out on the table in front of Catherine. "Just one last thing and then we'll leave you alone, all right? Can you mark on here where you think that clearing was?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Even under the best of circumstances, Dean wasn't a big fan of tramping around in the wilderness. North Carolina in mid-June wasn't the best of circumstances. The trees provided plenty of shade, so maybe it wasn't as hot as it could've been, but it was still plenty hot, especially in the long jackets they had to wear to cover up the guns. The brochures they'd picked up at the ranger's station near the start of the trail carried on poetically about the waterfalls, the wildlife and the mountain scenery, but totally failed to mention the humidity or the clouds of gnats. Dean felt as if he was wading through molasses. Molasses with bugs in it.

Catherine had not been very exact about the location of the clearing. She'd marked the place where she and Janet had left the trail, and the general direction they'd gone in, but she could give no exact distances or useful landmarks. Janet had done the orienteering, and Catherine had followed along. After Janet's disappearance, she'd spent several hours hobbling around the woods at random until a passing party of hikers heard her cries for help. Hearing the tale, Dean had grimly resigned himself to spending the rest of the afternoon, and possibly the next day, searching for the right spot.

He needn't have worried. The EMF meter began screaming even before they stepped off the trail, every light going off at once. Dean hadn't seen a signal so strong since that vanir in Burkitsville. He sincerely hoped they weren't about to be stuck with yet another pagan god to deal with, because those really sucked. Sam didn't look too thrilled at the prospect either, but there was nothing to be done for it. They followed the signal.

The clearing was about a half-hour's hike off the trail, and it looked so pretty and picturesque in the late afternoon sun that Dean was inclined to suspect it of evil just on principle. The grass was thick and emerald green, dotted with wildflowers, and the water in the stream was crystal clear. Perhaps it was Dean's imagination that made the shadows among the surrounding trees seem extra-dark and extra-thick, but with the EMF meter threatening to vibrate itself to pieces in his hand, he wasn't about to bet on that. He turned off the meter to stop the distracting noise and pulled the largest of the three pistols he was carrying from its shoulder holster.

"Look sharp, Sam. I don't like this place."

"Me neither." Sam had his own gun out. He crouched on the stream bank to peer into the water. "I don't think we'll find anything useful here anyway. It's been over a week, and the cops and the rangers have all tramped through. If there was ever a trail, which I kinda doubt, it's gone by now."

"You're probably right." Dean edged along the border between sunlight and shadow, keeping the gun pointed ahead of him. "But hey, if whatever took Janet is still hanging around, maybe it'll have a go at one of us."

"There's a comforting thought." The click of the safety on Sam's pistol echoed with unnatural clarity in the still air. Dean grinned.

"Don't worry, Sammy. It goes for the good-looking ones, remember? You're safe as houses."

"Uh-uh. Let's hope it doesn't go for the assholes, or you'll really be in trouble."

They circled the clearing on opposite sides, Sam wading across the stream to examine the area where Janet had been standing when she was taken. As Sam had predicted, there was nothing unusual to see, no trail to follow. Certainly nothing that looked like hoof prints. Just grass and flowers and the occasional toadstool and--

_Whoa_. Dean stopped, lowered his gun and stepped out into the sunlight to peer at the fat, pasty-white mushroom that poked out of the grass near his feet. He'd passed several such mushrooms as he walked, and looking over the clearing now he could see them forming an irregular circle, about thirty feet in diameter, with the stream cutting across it a little off-center. The grass inside the circle looked darker and thicker than outside it, and the flowers seemed to bloom in brighter colors. Dean's stomach gave an unpleasant lurch as he realized Sam was standing right at the edge of it, a toadstool half-crushed under one boot heel.

"Yo, Sam!"

"What?"

"Take a step forward, will you?"

"Why?" Sam asked, but he took the step. Dean let out a slow breath.

"Turn around, look down, tell me what you see."

Sam turned. "What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"The mushrooms. Tell me if you're seeing what I'm seeing."

"The what?" Sam stared at the ground, blankly at first, then with dawning recognition. "Oh, come on. There's no way."

"It's a fairy ring, Sam. I know one when I see one."

"Really? How many times have you seen one?"

"I've seen pictures."

"Right." Sam tucked his gun back inside his jacket and came over to stand next to Dean, carefully keeping his feet outside the ring. "You've seen pictures. Pictures from Europe, I bet. And you know why? Because there's _no Fae in North America,_ Dean."

"Are too. There's a whole Seelie Court in Minneapolis. Dad did a job for them a couple of years ago."

"Dad did a wha--" Sam broke off abruptly and shook his head. "Never mind, I don't want to know. And this isn't Minneapolis."

"If there's one colony, there can be more. Come on, Sam, it makes sense. Fairies like green, woodsy places. And they carry off good-looking young mortals when they get in the mood. And they sometimes put bells in their horses' manes."

"They do?"

"Dad says they do. Apparently, they have a thing for music."

"Right. Fairies like music. It all makes sense now." Sam looked thoroughly flabbergasted, which would've been pretty funny if Dean himself wasn't feeling as if someone had just turned him upside down and given him a good shake. This was way outside their area of expertise. "Okay, say it is the Fae. What do we do about it?"

Dean scratched his head as he pondered the question. "Apologize for disturbing them, back out of here slowly, and run like hell?"

"Not really an option."

"I know. Bummer."

"We need to find out more." Sam shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed. "You do realize that if Janet's been with them for over a week, she's probably eaten or drunk something, right?"

"Yeah, I know." Eat the food of Faerie, and be trapped there forever... Dean thought about Catherine Taylor, fighting back tears in a cafe in Asheville because her best friend was gone. What the hell were they going to tell her? "We'll just have to figure something out, that's all."

"What about the ranger station?" Sam waved one arm in the general direction of the trail. "We should talk to him. I mean, if there are fairies traipsing around the forest ringing bells and abducting people, who else is more likely to notice?"

"It's a start, I guess." Dean slid his gun back into the holster. He took a step toward the trees, then stumbled to an abrupt halt as Sam gripped his arm.

"Dean."

"Yo?"

"Check out those birds."

Dean looked up. Three birds perched side by side on a sycamore branch on the far side of the clearing, looking down at him with strange, unbirdlike intensity. They had smoky gray feathers, fluffy and soft-looking, with brilliant slashes of color on the wings, like racing stripes. The colors were different on each bird -- one red, one yellow, one blue. Dean had never paid any particular attention to birds and their colors, but he was pretty sure that these were not normal.

"Uhm," Dean said. It wasn't especially loud -- just an exhalation, really -- but apparently it was enough to make a disturbance. The birds let out a chorus of soft, tuneful cries and took off all at once, fading into the blue sky far more quickly than they should've. Dean stared after them for a minute, then turned to look at Sam, who spread his arms and shrugged.

"Ranger station?"

"Right. Let's go."

* * *

The ranger station was a small cabin with a screened porch and gauzy blue curtains in the windows. From the outside, it looked unnaturally clean and polished, more like a toy than a real place for real people. The windows sparkled, the steps leading up to the porch didn't have a speck of dirt on them despite all the visitors who presumably tramped in and out all day, and the porch itself gleamed as if it had just been varnished. _Barbie's Woodland Getaway_, Dean thought, and promptly spoiled the cleanliness by tripping over a saucer of milk someone had left outside the door.

"Well, don't cry over it," Sam smirked. Dean glared at him as he picked shards of broken porcelain out of the puddle of spilled milk.

"Ha-ha. See if there's anyone home, comedian."

The middle-aged man who answered Sam's knock was as spit-and-polished as his cabin, in spotless boots and neatly creased trousers. The brass nametag on his uniform shirt pronounced him to be T. W. Carlisle. Sam gave him the patented sincere face, and Dean did his best to match it.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Carlisle. I'm Robert Halford, and this is my partner, Glenn Tipton." He held out the remains of the saucer. "We kinda broke this, sorry. If you have some paper towels or something, we'll clean it up."

"We?" Sam mouthed silently. Dean ignored him.

"Oh, don't worry about it. Just drop the pieces in the waste basket, and I'll take care of it." Carlisle smiled and waved them in, gesturing toward a plush sofa near the window as he hurried toward the doorway at the back of the room.

"Have a seat, make yourself comfortable. I'll be right with you."

Through the doorway, Dean could see one corner of a kitchen -- white formica countertop and a gas stove. Carlisle stepped sideways out of sight, and Dean heard the sound of a refrigerator door opening and closing. A few seconds later, Carlisle reappeared with a new saucer in one hand and a handful of paper towels in the other, and headed for the porch.

Dean prowled around the room while Sam sat on the sofa and looked genuinely engrossed in an old issue of _Field and Stream_. There wasn't much to see. The place looked like a cross between a private living room and a public waiting area. Besides the sofa, there was a wooden desk with a telephone, a coffee table, a wire rack filled with old magazines and another one holding tourist brochures and trail maps. An oversized poster labeled "Native birds of the Carolinas" was tacked to the wall behind the desk. Everything was as spotless as the porch, not a speck of dust anywhere. Dean looked down at his battered boots and felt he was lowering the tone of the place just by standing there.

"There, all taken care of." Carlisle came back inside and dropped a wad of soggy paper towels into the waste basket. "Don't mind me. There's a feral cat with a litter of kittens nesting under the porch, and I like to put a bit of food out for them when I can. Now, what can I get you two? Tea? Coffee? I've currant buns in the kitchen, baked fresh this morning."

Dean and Sam began to mutter refusals at the same time, but Carlisle would not be put off. Stray hikers, apparently, were in the same category as stray kittens and needed feeding. Within minutes, Dean was sipping some of the best coffee he'd ever had while Sam fished the sprig of mint from his glass of iced tea. A plate of currant buns sat on the coffee table in front of them. Carlisle must've warmed them in the oven, because when Dean tore a piece from one, it scalded his fingers and released a puff of yeast-scented steam. It was all so domestic that Dean had to forcibly remind himself they weren't there for a social visit. He pulled his fake PI license from inside his jacket and told Carlisle the same story he'd given Catherine earlier.

"Detectives?" Carlisle frowned and shook his head. "Seems silly if you ask me. I mean, I'm sorry for that poor girl, and I'm sorry for the family, but I can't imagine what the two of you think you can do, when dozens of people have looked for over a week and didn't find a thing. We even had helicopters out, and... nothing."

"Are people still looking?" Sam asked. Carlisle looked grim.

"They're dredging the rivers now."

"What do you think happened?" Dean asked. Carlisle shrugged.

"I think she wandered off and got lost. Fell down and hurt herself, maybe, couldn't get back to the trails. Happens every year. We keep telling people not to go off the marked paths, but..."

"But she was supposed to be an experienced hiker," Sam said. "She had a compass with her, knew what she was doing--"

"Yes," Carlisle sighed. "Those are the ones that always get into trouble, you know. Just as when someone drowns, often as not there's fifty friends and family crawling out of the woodwork to tell you what a good strong swimmer the victim was. The good ones get reckless, see? Think it can't happen to them."

"Uh-huh." Sam aimed an entirely unwarranted smirk at Dean, who virtuously ignored it. "I've noticed that from time to time."

Time to get to the point, Dean decided. "What about those horses Catherine Taylor heard?"

Carlisle looked amused. "There were no horses. The riding trails are nowhere near that area."

"Still," Dean insisted, "if hikers go off the trails, riders might too."

"There would've been tracks. The ground is soft there, and it had rained just a couple of days before. There's no way a horse could've gone through and left no mark. Take my word for it, that Taylor girl panicked when she saw she was lost, and started hearing things when there was nothing there to hear. People get that way in the woods sometimes."

Panic, in Dean's experience, did not make people hear imaginary horses, either in the woods or out of them. "You live here in the cabin?" he asked.

Carlisle nodded. "Six months out of the year. Decent pay, free room and board, and all the gorgeous scenery I can look at every day. Can't ask for a better job, can you?"

"And you've never heard any unusual noises? No horses, no bells or music?"

"Just the occasional meow under the porch." Carlisle laughed, but Dean thought it sounded a little strained.

Sam had gotten up to wander around the room while Dean and Carlisle was talking. He was on the other side now, peering curiously at the bird poster behind the desk.

"Can I ask you something?" he said abruptly. "We saw some unusual birds when we were looking around earlier, and I don't see them listed here. I don't suppose you'd know what they were? Gray, about this big, bright colored stripes on the wings?"

Carlisle's expression turned pinched for just a second or two, then rearranged itself into a friendly grin again.

"Yes, of course. The Argentinian Wood Dove. You're not going to find it on that poster, or any of the local guides for that matter -- they're not indigenous to the area. Just migrate through every year."

"Argentinian Wood Dove?" Sam repeated blankly. Carlisle nodded vigorously.

"You're fortunate to have seen one. Very few people do. They tend to be shy."

"And we get three all in one spot. Lucky us." Dean drained the last few drops of his coffee and stood up. "Thank you very much for you help, sir. We'll be going now. You ready, dude?" He snagged one last bun from the plate and headed for the door.

Outside, the temperature had dropped about ten degrees while they were sitting around chatting, and the sun was half-sunk behind the Blue Ridge mountains. Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced over at Sam, who was zipping up his jacket.

"So what do you think?"

"He's lying," Sam said with perfect conviction. "He knows something."

"Right," Dean said. "I mean seriously -- Argentinian Wood Dove? I've come up with better cover stories than that at two in the morning, drunk off my feet. But I'd bet a hundred bucks we'll never get him to admit it."

"You don't have a hundred bucks."

"I would if I could get somebody to take that bet." Dean slapped a mosquito off the back of his neck and scowled. "Look, we need to put together a plan here. What do we know about fairies? They don't like salt and iron and certain kinds of plants. They steal human babies and leave changelings. What am I leaving out?"

"They're capricious," Sam said. "And sneaky. Some of them can change shapes, or make other things change their shapes. They'll trick you if they can, but they don't tell outright lies and they always keep their word."

"What else?"

"Uhm... they like music and dancing?"

"Oh, that's helpful." Dean scowled. "What do you say we get back to civilization and figure out what to do next? This shit is a bit out of our league. I hate to say this, but I think we need more research."

"See?" Sam said. "I'm a good influence on you."

They walked down the main trail toward the lot where they'd parked the car. It seemed a lot lonelier and darker now than it had earlier in the day, when the sun was blazing and random people in hiking gear passed by every couple of minutes. Dean did not spook easily, yet now he found himself peering from side to side as he walked, searching for movement in the shadows between the trees, holding his breath at the slightest sound. His hand kept twitching toward his gun, though he couldn't say precisely why.

"Something's watching us," Sam whispered from half a step behind him. Dean rolled his eyes.

"No shit, Sherlock. Can you see it?"

"Not exactly. I keep seeing movement in the corner of my eye, but when I turn, there's nothing th--"

The scream made them both jump. It came from a particularly dark thicket of trees to the right of the trail, and it sounded pained and terrified, a woman screaming for her life. Dean had his gun out in an instant, and a quick glance sideways confirmed that Sam had his in his hand, too.

"Could be a trap," Dean muttered.

"Yeah." Sam nodded, looking as unhappy as Dean felt. "But we still have to check it out."

Another scream, even more high-pitched and desperate. Dean swore and took off running in the direction of the sound. Sam was right behind him, and then beside him, and then ahead of him -- a lanky, long-legged shadow racing away with a flashlight in one hand. Dean followed the flickering beam, pushing the limits of his own running speed and hoping that he wouldn't be too out of breath to fight by the time they found whatever it was they were looking for.

Something clawed at his ankle and he went down, belly flopping into the dirt and banging his chin on the ground hard enough to leave him dazed for a few seconds. He managed to hold on to the gun when he fell, but there was nothing to shoot at, and a quick grope with his free hand established that his attacker was nothing worse than a protruding tree root. A very _grabby_ root, and by the time Dean got himself free and climbed to his feet, Sam was just a faint, bobbing light in the distance. Dean raced after him, yelling his name, but Sam was still running too, and the distance between them never seemed to grow closer, not even when Dean broke into a sprint.

"Sam!" he yelled again, but his voice was drowned out by a sudden onslaught of fast, rhythmic drumming. It took Dean several moments to recognize the noise as hooves running on soft ground.

Hooves. Horses. And now that he was listening for them, he could hear the bells, too, along with something that sounded like horns in the background. _Oh, fuck_. Dean froze for a moment, and in that moment, between one breath and the next, Sam's light went out.

"Sam!" Dean stumbled forward, panic bubbling up inside him. The forest around him was pitch black now, night instead of dusk, as if hours rather than minutes had passed since they'd left the trail. Dean dug through his pockets with his left hand, pulled out his own flashlight and switched it on. The beam picked out trees, grass, some dead branches scattered on the ground. No horses. No dancing fairies. And most of all, no Sam.

Dean turned in a circle, gun and flashlight held straight out in front of him, and saw nothing but empty forest, even though the hoof beats thundered all around him. Once, a horse snorted right into his ear, and he actually _felt_ the puff of hot air on the back of his neck, but when he whirled around there was nothing there. Once, he thought he heard a woman's laughter, clear and cold, and something gauzy and flower-scented brushed across his face. Dean's finger itched to send a bullet in that direction, but he couldn't risk it, not without knowing exactly where Sam was.

"Dean!" The cry came from off to the side, nowhere near the spot where Dean had last seen the gleam of Sam's flashlight. Or what he'd thought was Sam's flashlight. Dean lunged in the direction of Sam's voice, mentally cursing himself out for being an idiot. He'd followed a will-of-the-wisp, trailed after it like a fucking _amateur_, and now Sam was-- Sam was--

The hoof beats were retreating into the distance now. Dean started to follow, but stopped when his flashlight picked out a metallic gleam on the ground ahead of him. Sam's spare pistol clip, lying discarded in the grass. A quick search revealed another clip, then the gun itself, then Sam's pocketknife. Dean shouted again, but he knew it was no use.

Sam was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"Get your asses out here, you fairy motherfuckers!" Dean stood in the center of the fairy circle, shouting at the top of his voice. "Come out and talk to me, or I swear to god, I'll torch your fucking dance floor and salt the earth, don't think I won't!"

Nothing. Silence except for the gurgling of the stream and the faint rustling of trees in the wind. Dean clenched his fists, took a few deep breaths, and forced himself to think. Calm. He needed to be calm. This wasn't like the time in Minnesota. Fairies were well-known for carrying people off, but they weren't especially known for murdering them. Sam was probably -- almost certainly -- definitely -- alive. And he knew enough not to take candy from strangers. Dean could get him back. Would get him back. He just needed a plan. Standing in the middle of the woods and shouting was not a plan. Calm. He needed to be calm. He needed to know what he was dealing with.

His watch said it was eleven o'clock. He had no idea how the fuck it had gotten to be eleven o'clock, but it meant that the library and all the bookstores would likely be closed. Well, it wasn't as if that had ever stopped him before. Dean switched on his flashlight -- not his, _Sam's_ flashlight, which he was going to return as soon as he got Sam back, which he definitely would -- and began the long trudge back to the car.

The library in Asheville was closed, but their security was a joke. By midnight, Dean was seated at a rickety table in the back, staring grimly at the pile of books he'd picked out as possibly useful. _The Complete Brothers Grimm_. _Early English Ballads_. _Folk Tales of the British Isles_. Not the sort of thing he generally dug up for research, but probably the best thing he was going to find in a small-town library in North Carolina. Dean sighed, propped the flashlight against a pile of reference books some previous patron had left behind, and flipped open the Brothers Grimm.

Three hours later, he had little to show for his efforts beyond a pounding headache and a general conviction that the Grimms were sick fucks. The stories in all the books seemed to repeat each other over and over, and most of them confirmed what he already knew, but none contained any useful instructions. And for once, his father's journal had nothing helpful to add, either. John Winchester had done the Minneapolis job solo, and would neither speak nor write about it afterwards. Dean eyed the folk tales book, and wondered uneasily if his father had a geas on him. It wasn't a particularly helpful thought, so he shoved it aside and went back to his reading.

By five in the morning, the words on the pages were beginning to look like meaningless squiggles, and Dean decided it was time to quit. He was bleary-eyed and shaking with exhaustion, but he had a basic idea of what he needed to do next. The fairies couldn't be forced, at least not by the likes of Dean Winchester, but they could be bargained with. It was just a matter of finding one to talk to. And Dean was pretty sure he knew where to look.

* * *

Ranger Carlisle must've been sleeping the sleep of the not-entirely-innocent, because it took two minutes of pounding on the cabin door to bring him shuffling out in his robe and pajamas. He leaned against the doorframe and blinked sleepily at Dean.

"You're that detective from yesterday... do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Do I look like I care?" Dean shoved his shoulder against the door, forcing Carlisle back a step. "Where is it? I want to talk to it."

"Talk to what?" Carlisle's expression was still confused and sleepy, but a hint of apprehension began to creep in. "You can't just barge--"

"Your brownie, kobold, whatever it is. The thing that does your cooking and cleaning for you, the thing you leave the milk out for." Dean gave another shove and squeezed through the gap in the door before Carlisle had a chance to close it. "And don't you dare try to tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. I don't want to hurt the thing, okay? I just want to talk to it."

"I--" Carlisle shifted from foot to foot, watching Dean with wary eyes. Dean supposed he _was_ looking pretty psychotic by that point, but he figured he had good reason. Still, he forced himself to stay where he was and to speak in a quiet, reasonably steady voice.

"Look, Carlisle, if you know they're here, then you must know what they've been doing. They took Janet Macalvie, and last night they took my brother."

"Your brother?"

"Yes. Look, I'm really not in the mood to explain right now. I just need to talk to the fairies." Dean winced and rubbed his eyes as the utter insanity of that statement caught up with him. If he was wrong, if Carlisle was just a kindly old coot with a neatness fetish, then this conversation was likely to end with Dean locked in a padded room somewhere, and then there'd be no one around at all to haul Sam's sorry ass out of trouble.

Well, the words were out of his mouth now. Nothing left to do but carry on. "Look, I don't want to mess with them, all right? I'm not stupid. I just want to talk with them, make a deal. So just call up... whatever it is you call up, and we'll work it out like civilized people and elves, all right?"

Carlisle still hesitated, and Dean had to fight down the urge to grab the bastard by the front of his flannel jammies and shake him till his teeth rattled.

"I'd like to help you," he said finally, "but I can't make him come on command, and I can't make him talk to you, either. Come back at midnight, and if he wants to be seen, you'll see him."

"Midnight?" Dean heard his own voice rising, eliciting a twitch and quick step backwards from Carlisle. "It's six in the goddamn morning!"

"I'm sorry." Carlisle really did look sympathetic, which only made Dean want to punch him all the more. "But if you really know what you say you do, then you know I can't do any better than this. Come back at midnight, and _maybe_ Tam will speak with you."

For a moment, Dean was tempted to plant himself on the couch and stay there until Carlisle gave him a better answer, but he could see it was no use. He was fairly sure the ranger wasn't lying, and picking a fight with the only person around who might help would only make things worse. Dean rubbed his face, and bit back an exhausted sigh at the thought of the drive back to town. He needed sleep, and food, and more time to think. It wouldn't do Sam any good if Dean keeled over in the middle of a rescue attempt.

"Midnight," he muttered. "Fine. I'll be here."

* * *

It was one of the longest days of Dean's life. He spent most of it at the library, alternating between reading his way through the folklore section and simply sleeping with his head down on the table. The librarians gave him funny looks from time to time, but made no attempt to actually throw him out, for which he was grateful.

He thought he knew now why Sam had been taken. "Young and good-looking" might be a necessary condition for fairy abduction, but it was not always sufficient. The Fae went for artsy types, and for the magically sensitive. Margaret Benning had been a witch. Two of the other missing persons on Sam's list had been musicians. Janet Macalvie was a photographer, which apparently qualified. And then there was Sam and his Shining, which apparently doomed him to go through life with the psychic equivalent of a "kick me" sign on his back.

Dean tried to look on the bright side. It seemed that the Fae only swiped people they actually _liked_, which meant murder or torture probably weren't part of the plan. Unless Sam managed to piss them off somehow, but Sam hardly ever pissed off people who weren't blood relatives. Dean kept telling himself that as he popped an aspirin and tackled _The Great Encyclopedia of Faeries._

By the time the library closed, he was so twitchy he was practically vibrating. The afternoon-shift librarian looked distinctly relieved to close the door behind him, and Dean himself was relieved to just be moving. He spent nearly two hours wandering in circles around downtown Asheville trying to walk off the jitters, returned to the hostel for dinner, then went out and walked some more. All this endless not doing anything was driving him nuts. He wanted to be out questioning somebody, looking for something, driving somewhere, beating something up... hell, just sitting down someplace quiet and cleaning the guns would be a constructive thing to do, except there wasn't enough privacy at the hostel.

Eventually, aimless walking began to feel no better than doing nothing, so he got into the car and drove back to Pisgah, found the clearing again, made yet another inspection of the fairy ring. There was nothing new to see, of course, just grass and toadstools again. If the fairy host were having a hoe-down in there, they were doing it invisibly. And very quietly.

He did see some birds fluttering in the trees above the stream again, but it was getting dark by then, and he couldn't make out the markings.

At eleven-thirty, he stood on Carlisle's front porch and banged on the door until a very annoyed Carlisle came to let him in.

"You're early," he grumbled.

"Deal." Dean planted himself on the couch and put his feet on the coffee table. "So, you sure you can't make it pop up a few minutes early?"

Carlisle looked even more annoyed. "I told you, didn't I? I don't _make_ him pop up at all. Tam comes when he wills, and that happens to be midnight."

"Fine." Dean folded his arms across his chest and slouched a little deeper into the sofa cushions. "That's all I need in my life, punctual fairies. If this Tam is so freaking independent, how'd you get it to keep house for you?"

"I didn't. He just showed up one night three years ago, and took it upon himself. Once I realized what was going on, I started putting the milk out." Carlisle's expression shifted from irritation to faint amusement. "After all, I don't especially like cooking and cleaning for myself."

"Three years." Dean shook his head. "You've known they were here for three years and you never did a thing."

"They've never done any harm before! And what exactly was I supposed to do -- report them to the National Forest Service?"

"Yeah, well..." Dean couldn't argue the point, really. "You have to do something now, you know that, don't you? Rope off that clearing. Declare it a pollution hazard, or an endangered mosquito species habitat or something, I don't care. We can't have people being carried off every few years."

Carlisle shook his head. "It doesn't work that way, son. I don't tell the Forest Service what to do anymore than I tell the Folk. Besides, short of paving the place over with cold iron, there just ain't no way of keeping people out, or keeping _them_ in. Some things, we just have to live with."

"Speak for yourself," Dean said.

Carlisle made no reply to that, and Dean wasn't especially in the mood to continue the conversation, either. They sat in stiff silence on opposite ends of the couch, barely looking at each other, until the digital clock on Carlisle's desk showed two minutes to midnight. Then Carlisle got up, looking wary, and headed for the kitchen. Dean started to rise, too, but Carlisle waved him back.

"Wait here. I'll call you when it's all right to come in." And he shut the door behind him. Dean started to rise, then gathered the last remaining shreds of his temper and stayed put. He'd waited all day. He wasn't about to fuck it up now because he couldn't wait two more minutes.

_But if that thing in there doesn't tell me where Sammy is, I'm going to kick its fey behind back to the old country._

There was a burst of noise from the kitchen, as if all the dishes in all the cabinets were rattling against each other. Dean jumped to his feet, but the racket was followed by Carlisle's voice, low and indistinct. Dean couldn't make out what he was saying, or if anyone was speaking back, but at least the man wasn't screaming for help. Dean stopped a couple of paces away from the door and told himself that if this... this whatever-it-was has spent the past three years cleaning Carlisle's house and cooking his meals, it probably wasn't going to suddenly rip his throat out just because he asked it to talk to somebody. Probably.

More clanking, more quiet muttering, and then the door swung open.

"Come on in," Carlisle called out.

Dean stepped into the kitchen. It was a long, narrow room lit by a single bare bulb in the center of the ceiling. Carlisle stood leaning against the refrigerator door, looking tense but not frightened. Perched across the room from him, on the counter next to the sink, was a creature that looked like a cross between a very small old man and a very large toad. It had a bald head and a huge, bushy brown beard through which a wide, thin-lipped mouth was visible. Squatting, it was maybe a foot tall, and the beard hid its body except for the twiggy arms and legs that stuck out the sides at sharp angles, the hands and feet much too large for the limbs that held them.

The sink next to it was filled with water and billowing suds. Cups and plates and the occasional piece of silverware bobbed up and down in the suds, occasionally clanking against each other while a scrub brush scoured them clean.

"Cool," Dean said. The brownie stared at him with huge, unblinking eyes, all green iris and black pupil, not a hint of white visible at the corners. Dean thought it didn't look pleased.

Carlisle cleared his throat. "Tam, this is Rob Ha--"

"Dean Winchester," Dean said quickly. Everything he'd read indicated that lying to fairies was a really bad idea, especially if you wanted to bargain with them.

Carlisle frowned at him, but didn't press the point.

"Dean Winchester, this is Tam. He's agreed to help you."

"Thanks." Dean stepped forward and held his hand out to shake, but Tam skittered back, bristling. The dishes above the sink all collapsed noisily into in, splashing droplets of soapy water all over the place.

"Keep back." The brownie's voice was low and raspy, like the dry scrape of wood against wood. "Got the stink of cold iron all over you."

_Well, excuse me for living_. Dean shoved his hands in his pockets. "Okay, fine, I'm keeping back. This far enough for you?" He moved to stand next to Carlisle, the fridge at his back. "I'm not here to keep you from your housecleaning, okay? I just want--"

"I know what you want," Tam rasped. "Green Lady took a mortal last night. Your brother, I hear."

"Yeah." Dean's chest felt tight all of a sudden. He'd thought he'd been dealing pretty well, but hearing the whole mess summed up like that by a stranger -- a not even human stranger, looking at him with something like pity in those weird green eyes -- gave him the chills. He found himself pulling his jacket tighter around himself, huddling into the protective embrace of worn leather, clenching his hand around the car keys in his pocket.

_Buck up, Winchester, you'll be wishing for a security blankie next._ Dean stood up straight and glared at Tam, who glared back, unimpressed.

"This Green Lady -- she's your queen?"

The noise Tam made at that really did sound like a toad croaking. It took Dean a moment to figure out that it was probably a laugh.

"Likes to say she is. And there's some that like to believe her. Others say she ain't. Me, I do my work and pay no mind."

"Right," Dean rolled his eyes. "I'm not too keen on your court politics either. All I want to know is, how do I make your green bitch give my brother back?"

"You don't." Tam made the croaking sound again, and the tightness in Dean's chest threatened to choke him. "Proper queen or no, the likes of you don't make the Lady do anything."

"The likes of me," Dean said tightly, "are going to do a lot of damage to the likes of you if I don't get a better answer than that."

Carlisle coughed nervously beside him, but Tam looked more amused than threatened. Or at least, Dean _thought_ that weird scrunching of the brownie's face was amusement.

"I said you can't make her. Can strike a bargain, though. Get your hands on something she wants, and you can trade with her."

"Something she wants." All right, that made sense. "How do I find that?"

And now there was a definite grin on Tam's face, flashing teeth like yellow marbles.

"Seen any interesting birds around lately?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

He had to wait another day before he could act. It was worse than the day before, because there was less to do. Nothing to do, in fact, except sit, and wait, and count all the ways that everything could go wrong, and contemplate all the things his father was likely to say when Dean called to tell him he'd let Sammy get stolen by the fairies. By the time dusk came around, Dean was ready to start punching holes in the walls.

Removing all traces of cold iron from his person proved unexpectedly difficult, mostly because he wasn't entirely sure how cold iron was different from regular iron, and which items actually counted. Guns and knives were out, he was sure of that, but other things he had to stop and think about. He had no clue what the innards of his watch were made of, or the zipper on his jeans. In the end, he decided to take no chances and showed up at the clearing barefoot, in sweatpants, t-shirt, and flannel shirt. The only metal item he dared to take was his lighter, which was silver-plated and therefore, according to Tam, "safe enough, like as not."

It was almost as bad as showing up naked. Dean couldn't remember the last time he'd gone anywhere so completely and thoroughly unarmed. He was sharply aware that if the whole thing turned out to be a trap, he would have nothing to defend himself with. Hell, even if the whole thing wasn't a trap, and some random non-fey nasty decided to leap out of the bushes, he'd be reduced to punching it in the nose and hoping for the best. Just thinking of it made the back of his neck feel prickly.

It didn't help that, on Tam's insistence, he'd turned the clothes inside out before putting them on. Tam had claimed it would help conceal his presence somehow, and Dean had figured it couldn't hurt to go along, but now, in addition to being unarmed and practically bare-assed, he also felt like a total idiot.

There wasn't much by way of cover in the clearing, but the stream did have a few bushes growing along the banks. Dean crouched behind the largest, thickest one and hoped to hell he wasn't sitting in poison oak. He wasn't sure what time it was, having left his watch at the ranger station along with the rest of his stuff, but the last glimmers of daylight were fading from the sky, which meant he needed to look sharp and be ready to move at any moment. Dean flexed his shoulders, winced, and shifted his weight into a marginally less uncomfortable position.

A flutter of wings overhead made him duck down lower into the greenery. He held perfectly still for a few seconds, not even breathing, then crept forward a little and pushed a few branches aside with one hand to get a view of the stream.

The three weird birds he'd seen earlier were now perched in the grass just down the stream bank from him, cooing softly to each other and preening their feathers. Dean could make out the slashes of color on their wings far more clearly than he should've been able to, given the low light. They seemed... not to glow, exactly, but to show up more vividly than normal against their background. Then, as Dean watched, the air around them began to shimmer, like a filmy silk curtain blowing in a breeze. It obscured the birds from sight for a few seconds, and then, when it cleared, there were no longer any birds to see. Instead there were--

_Holy fuck_. It's not as if he hadn't known they were going to be girls. "Maiden sisters three" was how Tam had put it, and Dean had snickered and made some smirking comments about how he hoped they'd be pretty, but no amount of hope or warning could be enough to prepare him for all the smooth, graceful curves, and the creamy white skin, and the flowing manes of silvery hair, and--

They were down in the water now, giggling and splashing at each other. Their hair clung to their backs in thick wet strands. The water had to be ice cold, but it wasn't bothering them as far Dean could see, thought it was making their nipples very, very perky...

Dean's throat felt dry. He was acutely conscious of his own heartbeat, and of the matching pulse in his groin. _Down, boy. Focus._ This shit was better than late-night cable, but he wasn't here for the peep show. He had a task to perform. Dean fixed his eyes on the spot where the birds had first landed, and slowly edged toward it on his hands and knees.

It was full dark now. The three chicks acting out Dean's favorite new fantasy down in the water still had that uncanny clarity to them, but up on the bank there was only moonlight to see by. Dean swept his hands over the grass and hoped that the darkness was hiding him from sight as well. The inside-out clothing trick was only supposed to work as long as he didn't call undue attention to himself, and he really had no idea if what he was doing now counted as "undue."

Something that didn't feel like grass tickled against his palm. Dean snatched it up, and bit back a cry of triumph at the sight of a sapphire-blue feather gleaming in the moonlight. He tucked it into the pocket of his sweatpants, and kept searching. Now that he knew he was at the right spot, it didn't take long to find the other two feathers. Dean clutched them all in his fist and stood up.

"Hey, girls! I think you've lost something."

It was like a perfectly choreographed dance: they all jumped in unison, turned toward him in unison, gasped in unison. Three matched sets of perfect boobs heaved in unison. Dean gulped and forced his gaze upward, locking eyes with the girl who stood in the middle.

She had a pale, heart-shaped face with a wet pink mouth and pale gray eyes fringed by ridiculously long lashes. Her hair had a single blue streak in it, just off-center, matching the red and yellow streaks her sisters had. When she saw Dean looking, she took a step forward and reached out with one hand.

"Give them back," she said. Her voice was high and clear as a wind chime. "Please. We need them, and they're of no use to you."

"Give them back," the other two echoed.

Dean wanted to do it. They looked so _sad_, and they gazed at him with those big shining eyes as if he was the only man in the entire world who could help them, their hero, their knight in shining armor. He wanted to do anything for them, anything they asked, anything to make himself worthy of being looked at that way. And they weren't even asking much, were they? Three silly feathers that belonged to them in the first place. He didn't even know why he'd grabbed them in the first place, it wasn't as if he needed them for anything, no reason in the world not to just hand them back...

Icy water lapped at his bare feet. The shock of it snapped him back to reality, made the glamour they'd wrapped around him come apart at the seams. Dean looked down and found he was standing ankle-deep in the stream, the hand with the feathers in it half-raised toward the smiling girl in front of him. Her fingers were only inches away from his.

"Fuck!" Dean scrambled backwards. His feet skidded on the wet pebbles that lined the streambed, and he came down hard on his ass in the water, but managed to make it back to the bank without losing his grip on the feathers. He took the lighter from the pocket of his sweatpants, flicked it on, and held the feathers a couple of inches above the flames. "Cut that out! I mean it, stop messing with my head right now, or I swear I'll burn the damn feathers."

That stopped all three of them in their tracks. They looked at each other, and Dean had a sense that some sort of silent communication was taking place, before the one with the yellow-streaked hair spoke to him.

"What do you want?"

"To speak to the Green Lady."

"If we bring you to her, you'll return the feathers?"

Dean took another step back, looking steadily above the sisters' heads rather than into their eyes or at their oh-so-distracting bodies. "If you bring me to her," he said, "I'll trade her the feathers for my brother and for Janet Macalvie."

They made distressed little noises at that. Dean held his ground and continued not to look. He didn't know which one of them spoke to him next, and he didn't especially care.

"We can't--"

"That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

There was a long silence. Dean flicked the lighter off but kept it in his hand, and tilted his head a little so that he could watch the sisters in his peripheral vision without looking directly at them. He was starting to shiver. His wet clothes felt cold and clammy against his skin, and his left hip ached from his fall. Dean knew there'd be a hell of a bruise there later. He welcomed it. The memory of the glamour still tugged at the edges of his mind, enticing and unnerving, and he suspected it would be far too easy to slip under it again, even without looking, if he didn't have his present physical discomfort to keep him focused on reality. It was not a pleasant thought.

The sisters must've come to some sort of decision, because they linked hands and walked toward Dean together. Dean took another step back, holding the lighter in plain sight.

"Okay, so what's it going to be?"

"You must give one of the feathers back." Now it was the one with the red streak who spoke. Did they go around taking turns, or what? Dean shook his head.

"No way."

"You must, if you want us to help you. One of us needs to return to Faerie to speak to the Lady. We can't go in this shape."

"All right, fine." Dean held the red feather out to her and she snatched it from his hand. He stuck the others into his pocket along with the lighter. "Just don't take too long, or I might get impatient and start setting fires."

"I won't be long." She tucked the feather behind her left ear. There was another silk-curtain shimmer in the air around her, and the girl was gone and the bird was circling overhead. It flew over the toadstool ring, circled it three times, and vanished.

More waiting. Great. Dean sat down in the grass and rubbed his feet, which still felt half-frozen from his earlier foray into the stream. _I have just sent a bird to make me an appointment with the queen of Faerie so that I can trade my brother for a couple of feathers. My life is now officially too fucking weird._ He risked a glance over at the two remaining sisters, who stood huddled together a few feet away from him. They didn't seem inclined to attack, or to put the mind-whammy on him again, so he figured it was safe to keep looking. Problem was, the sight of them standing there all naked and fragile-looking and fluttering those feathery eyelashes made him feel guilty and turned on at the same time. Almost as bad as the mind-whammy in its own way.

"Oh, hell." Dean shrugged out of the flannel shirt, pulled the t-shirt over his head, and held both garments out at arm's length. "Here. They're a little damp, but it's gotta be better than standing around naked, right?"

He hadn't exactly expected them to fall all over him in gratitude, but even so, their reaction was kind of insulting. Blue-streak turned up her perfect little nose, and Yellow-streak pursed her perfect pink lips into an unbecoming pout.

"We're fine as we are," she said after a moment.

"What, do I have human cooties or something?" Dean rolled his eyes as he put both shirts back on. _Last time I ever try to be chivalrous..._

He was tugging the shirt cuffs down to his wrists when Red-streak flew out of the ring again, shifting into girl shape as soon as she was outside the toadstool border.

"The Lady will see you now," she said. "Come into the circle with me."

* * *

From his reading, Dean had had some vague idea that a trip to Faerie involved a lengthy horseback ride, with many symbolically branching roads and possibly a river of blood to wade through. He was kind of disappointed to discover it wasn't like that at all. Just a moment of dizziness when he stepped into the fairy ring. His vision blurred, and the ground seemed to dissolve under his feet. There was a sensation of falling that lasted long enough to make him start worrying about the landing, but the landing never came. The fall just stopped, and he was on solid ground again, but in a different place, alone.

It was bright daylight. He was standing in a field, and the sky overhead was a brilliant, eye-piercing blue, but there was no sun in it. Dean wondered where the light was coming from, then realized it was the same brightness that had clung to the three bird sisters back in Pisgah, only now it was on everything. The grass beneath his feet was a rich emerald green, dotted with unfamiliar, jewel-toned flowers. The air smelled clean and sweet.

There was a pavilion of some sort at the far end of the field -- a domed room held up by four columns, all entwined with flowering vines and leafy branches. It was huge. Dean thought they could've fit a couple of good-sized circus tents under it. And the crowd of freaks milling around under the dome certainly could've staffed a good circus or two.

There were things that looked like garden gnomes, and things that looked like two-legged foxes with human faces, and things that looked like skeletons made out of twigs. There were giant butterflies that proved, upon closer inspection, to be tiny naked people with butterfly wings. There were squat, bearded toad-like things that looked like Tam's cousins, and tall, androgynous folk in flowing robes that looked like extras from _Lord of the Rings._ Clothing seemed to be optional, but those who bothered were sure as hell making a fashion statement. Dean looked down at his damp, grass-stained sweatpants, and decided that the statement he was making was "fuck you." He squared his shoulders, straightened the collar of his shirt, and walked toward the pavilion.

Coming closer, he could see that it wasn't actually covered in vines and branches -- it was made of them. Or rather, grown of them. What he'd taken for columns were actually trees with slender trunks and smooth, silvery bark and long, flexible branches that twined together to form the roof. Bright spots of color skittered among the leaves. They might've been beetles, or just some very tiny fairies; Dean decided he didn't want to know. The freaks he could see were quite enough, thank you.

They gave him a wide berth as he walked by. Dean was grateful for that, but he really wished they weren't all so obviously _watching_. They didn't stare -- hardly anyone would look at him directly for any length of time -- but all the darting, sidelong glances were making him twitchy.

A little blonde girl in a gauzy white dress skipped past him, giggling. Dean actually thought she was cute for a moment, until she turned her head and grinned at him with a mouthful of long, needle-sharp teeth. She had a fawn on a leash, all wobbly legs and big liquid eyes, like something out of a Disney cartoon. She dragged it over to where a gaggle of other children were waiting, and they gathered round it with delighted squeals. Dean hoped they were just going to play with the poor thing and not eat it, but there was no time to find out. The crowd was scurrying out of his way. He was almost there.

Dean fixed his eyes on the ground and took the lighter out of his pocket again. As defenses went, it was a pretty pathetic one, but just the weight of it in his hand was comforting somehow. Dean flipped it open and held on to it tightly as he raised his head to look at the Green Lady.

She was seated on a wooden throne that, like the pavilion, seemed to grow straight out of the ground. Her dress was the color of fresh spring grass, with gold embroidery along the hem and the edges of the long, trailing sleeves. There was a faint green tint to her pale skin, too, and even to the blonde elbow-length hair that framed her face. Dean wondered what color she'd bleed.

The bird sisters stood to the left of the throne. All three were still in their birthday suits, but Dean was no longer interested in them. Because to the right, seated awkwardly on a stool much too low for him, was Sam.

He looked exactly the way he had on the night he'd been taken -- everything the same, from his scruffy clothes and disheveled hair to the small cut on his chin where he'd nicked himself shaving two mornings ago. Everything the same except for his eyes, which glanced at Dean with blank disinterest.

"Hey, Sam." Dean fought to keep his voice steady, and wasn't entirely sure he'd succeeded. "You okay?"

"Hey, Dean." Sam gave him a blandly polite smile, as if Dean was a stranger he had to make small talk with. "I'm great. How are you?"

Dean was still struggling to come up with an answer to that when the Green Lady spoke.

"Dean Winchester. We've been told you are here to ransom what you've stolen."

"Yeah? Well you've been told wrong." Dean scowled at her, not bothering to hide his anger. "I'm hear to ransom what _you've_ stolen."

"But we have stolen nothing." The Lady arched one delicate eyebrow at him, and swept her hand out to the side. "See for yourself."

Dean turned his head in the direction she was pointing, and saw Janet Macalvie standing there in a long blue dress and a circlet of flowers in her hair. She was holding hands with one of the Legolas wannabes, gazing at him with a besotted expression.

"Janet is where she wishes to be," the Lady said smugly. "She has shared food and wine with us, and is betrothed to our kinsman."

Dean's heart sank a little. "And Sam?"

"See for yourself." The Lady gestured, and one of the fox-like things stepped up with a tray of fruit. She took a strawberry and held it out to Sam, who bit into it happily.

Dean took a shaky step forward before he could stop himself. _God, Sammy, what did you do?_

"So you see," the Lady said, "they are bound here by our rules, and you are a thief. Return what you've taken and kneel to beg our forgiveness, and perhaps we shall grant it."

"I don't think so."

"_Kneel_."

The Lady's glamour was stronger than the bird sisters', but Dean had known it was coming. Even as his knees hit the ground, he was flicking the lighter on and holding his hand to the flame.

Predictably, it hurt like hell. He managed three, maybe four seconds before crying out and jerking his hand away. It was enough. By the time he blinked the tears from his eyes and rose to his feet again, his head was clear. Dean clicked the lighter shut and bared his teeth in a snarl at the Green Lady, who was looking a little greener than she had before. Apparently, he'd shocked her. Well, good.

Dean looked down at his right hand. It didn't look so bad, just a patch of blistered red skin at the base of his thumb, but the pain seemed to throb through every nerve from his fingertips to his elbow. He flexed his fingers, and just barely managed to hold back another cry.

Something bumped against his left leg, making him totter for a moment. Dean looked down, and saw that the little blonde girl's pet fawn had slipped its leash, and was now head-butting his leg and bleating at him. The children had apparently been playing dress-up with it -- there were a string of little silver bells and a couple of daisy chains draped around its neck. Dean tried to shoo it away, but it dug in its hooves and refused to budge until two of the kids ran up to drag it away. Dean watched them go, shook his head, and turned his attention back to the Lady.

"So," he said, "can we bargain properly now, or do you want to play more head games?"

She looked at him for what felt like a very long time, her face cold and still.

"Name your bargain," she said finally.

Dean reached into his pocket again. There was a fresh spike of pain as burned skin brushed against cloth and some of the blisters burst. He gritted his teeth and waited until it faded to a bearable level again, then wrapped his fingers around the feathers and held them out.

"A trade," he said. "One feather for Sam, one for Janet. Then we all walk away from here and never bother you again. And don't give me any crap about them eating your food, because I really don't give a flying fuck about your rules." He waited for an answer, but the Lady just gazed at him in silence. Dean twirled the lighter in his fingers, letting the silver catch the light. "Or, you know, I could just burn them."

This got a predictable burst of dismayed squealing from the bird sisters. Dean actually felt kind of bad for them, though not nearly bad enough to back down.

He looked over at Sam, and found him still sitting in the same position on the stool with the same blank look on his face. Dean leaned forward and waved his hand in front of Sam's eyes.

"Get with it, Sammy. I'm taking you out of here."

Sam stared at him without blinking. "But Dean," he said calmly, "I don't want to leave."

"Yeah, right. Tell me another one." Dean fought down the mix of fear and irritation that was threatening to choke him, and glared at the Lady again.

"So is it a deal, or what?"

The Lady tapped one slender finger against her chin. Her fingernails were green too, Dean noted. It was really kind of gross.

"We will trade you your brother for both feathers," she said, "if you can make him leave with you of his own free will."

"And Janet?"

"For her, you must make a separate bargain."

Dean hesitated. The green bitch clearly had something specific in mind, and he was willing to bet it wasn't anything good. For a moment, he was tempted to just make the trade for Sam and leave it at that. But the memory of Catherine Taylor crying over her chocolate cupcake would not be shaken off. Janet Macalvie had people who cared about her, too. He couldn't just leave her behind.

"What do you want?"

The thin smile the Lady gave him wasn't nice at all.

"There are occasions," she said, "when, for one reason or another, the Queen of Faerie might require the service of a competent mortal. If such an occasion comes for us, we will call on you and you will do as we request. _Whatever_ we request."

Oh, hell. He'd known it wouldn't be good. Dean paced back and forth in front of the Lady's throne, and wished that his father was there, or that Sam was in a condition to give advice, or that his hand didn't feel as if he was still holding it to a flame. Trying to concentrate through pain was better than trying to concentrate through glamour, but not by much.

"One occasion, right?" he said after a while. "Because there's no way I'm signing up for a lifetime of servitude."

"One occasion."

Well, that wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it still sucked. "I don't know, Your Greenness, I'm thinking you need to give me more than that. After all, the way you've set it up, you could tell me to rob Fort Knox or kill the Pope, and I'd have to do it, right?"

"We would ask you no such thing."

"Yeah, I'm sure you'll come up with something worse." Dean took a deep breath. "Look, if I agree to this, then I want your word that you'll never carry off another person ever again. I don't care how pretty they are, you keep your hands off, all right?"

The Lady frowned at him, then stared down at her folded hands for a while.

"Very well," she said finally, "I agree to both your bargains. But they both depend on Sam freely agreeing to leave. If he refuses, then you must stay here too." She gave Dean that thin, scary smile again. "You don't glow as brightly as your brother does, but I'm sure I'll find a use for you."

"All right," Dean said, "it's a deal."

Behind him, the air stirred, as if several hundred assorted creatures exhaled all at once. Dean looked behind him and saw that practically every damned thing in the pavilion was staring at him, except for the children, who were too busy draping sparkly ribbons over the long-suffering fawn. Dean watched them and wondered what would happen if this bargain of his went wrong, if he was making a mistake somehow. Was he going to be turned into somebody's pet, too? It really didn't bear thinking about.

"Dean Winchester." The Lady spoke in a ringing voice, not glamoured but pitched to carry throughout the pavilion. "It's time to seal our bargain. Come before us and kneel."

Dean considered refusing, just on principle, then decided it wasn't worth the bother. The whole fucking mess was almost over, one way or another. He could pretend to be obedient for a couple of minutes; no one was going to believe it anyway.

There was one thing to do first, though. Dean plastered a smile on his face, walked around the throne toward where the bird sisters were waiting, and held the feathers out to them.

"Here," he said. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

They stared at him with stunned expressions for a second or two, then snatched the feathers, transforming into birds before Dean had finished lowering his hand.

"You're welcome," he muttered as they fluttered away from him to soar in dizzy circles under the domed roof.

The lady was watching him with an impatient frown and tapping her fingers against the arm of her throne. Dean walked over to stand directly in front of her.

"Let's get it over with," he said, and dropped to one knee. From the corner of his eye, he could still see Sam's slouched form, sitting unnervingly still on the stool.

_Damn, I really, really hope I'm right about this..._

The Lady leaned forward and rested both hands on Dean's head. Her touch was light and cool, and her skin smelled faintly of lilacs.

"This is our pledge," she said in the same carrying voice she'd used earlier. "Your brother is free to leave with you provided you can get him to agree, as is Janet Macalvie, and we shall take no more mortals from this forest for as long as we hold court here. On this, you have our word. In return, you pledge to perform a single service on our behalf, whenever in the future we might request it. Do you agree to these terms?"

Dean licked his lips. "Yes."

"In addition, should your brother refuse to leave here when you ask, you both shall remain in Faerie for the rest of your mortal lives. Do you agree?"

"Yes."

"Very well." The Lady's hands suddenly felt unnaturally heavy against his skull. A sharp pain flared behind his temples, making him gasp, then faded as quickly as it came. "Our bargain is sealed. Our geas is on you. You may rise."

Dean rose. He felt a little light-headed, but otherwise fine.

"Okay," he said, "what now?"

The Lady spread her hands, palms up. "Now you go and talk to your brother."

"Right." Dean took a deep breath. _Here goes nothing_. He turned his back on the Lady and walked into the crowd. It wouldn't part for him the way it had when he was coming in, so he simply elbowed aside any creature that got in his way and kept moving, moving, moving until he reached the spot where the freaky elf-kids with their freaky sharp teeth were playing with the fawn.

"Scram," he said in his best threatening voice. They scrammed. Only the fawn stayed. It was trembling all over, from the tip of its nose to the white tuft of its tail, making the bells around its neck chime faintly. Dean took a step toward it, and it stumbled forward and butted its head against his knees, hard.

Dean gave a short, strangled laugh and patted its neck with his good hand. "Hey, Sammy," he said. "What do you say we blow this crazy joint, huh?"

Nothing happened at first. Dean held perfectly still and wondered, with a sick sort of feeling, if he had just royally fucked everything up. Then the air between him and the fawn did that shimmering-curtain trick, and when it cleared, Sam was sitting on the ground in front of Dean, looking dazed and scruffy and draped in way too many daisy chains. The bells around his neck were still chiming, and a crumpled gold ribbon clung to his hair. He batted it away with a shaking hand.

"Yes," Sam said through clenched teeth. "I'm saying yes. Yes, as in I want to leave, as in get me the fuck away from here, right now, this very minute, and did I mention _yes_?"

"I'll take that as a yes." Dean held out his hand, and Sam grabbed it and hauled himself to his feet. Together, they turned to face the Green Lady just in time to see the not-Sam at her feet collapse into a small pile of twigs and leaves. Dean rolled his eyes. "So are we done with the mind games? Can we leave now?"

"Please do," the Lady said coldly. Dean did his best not to smirk.

"Janet--"

"--Will be returned within the next three days." The Lady held up one hand to forestall Dean's protest. "Whether or not you respect our rules, they do exist. It will take time and effort to undo the bindings on her. You have our word that it will be done, that should be enough. Now go." She clapped her hands together, and the light went out.

Leaving Faerie was a rougher trip than entering it. It felt rather like being kicked down a steep staircase by a giant, and when it was over, Dean was sprawled face-down in the grass, with a ringing head and a mouthful of dirt. He coughed, spit, and pushed up to his knees, turning his head to see Sam doing the same a few feet away.

"Vindictive little bitch, ain't she?" he muttered under his breath. "You okay, Sam?"

"I think so." Sam rose unsteadily to his feet. "What about you? How's that hand?"

"It's fine." All the remaining blisters had burst, and there was probably dirt where dirt had no business being, but they could take care of it when they got to the first aid kit in the car. "I'll live."

"Not when I'm done with you!" Sam snapped, and smacked him in the chest, hard. "Are you insane? What the hell were you thinking?"

"Excuse me?" Dean gaped at his obviously furious brother, and wondered if he'd brought back a changeling after all. "What was I thinking? Don't you mean, 'thanks for saving my ass, Dean, you were brilliant?'"

"No, I mean, what were you thinking? You just swore to do an unspecified service for the queen of fucking Elfland! Are you nuts?"

"Hey, it's not like I had a lot of options to choose from. Anyway, we don't even know if she'll ever ask anything."

"You let her put a geas on you! I'm _so_ telling Dad."

"Hey, you started it. If you hadn't let her carry you off--"

"I didn't _let_ her carry me off."

"Well, you didn't stop her, did you? Honestly, Sam, you gotta stop with this 'getting abducted by freaks' shit. I don't care if it's psycho rednecks or snotty green bitches, just cut it out, okay?"

"Dean..."

"And how come you didn't see it coming, huh? All those visions, and you never get a hint that you're about to get carried off by a crazy green chick who wants a psychic boy toy? What's the deal with that?"

"Dean..."

"I mean, seriously, what's the point in being the Visionary Wonder if it draws all the freaks to you and then doesn't let you see them coming? Who designs these things, anyway?"

"Dean!"

"What?"

"Thanks for saving my ass. You were brilliant."

"Huh." Dean blinked rapidly and combed his hand through his hair. He was breathing much too fast, and his nose was running, and now that he thought about it he realized that he'd just been shouting. "You're welcome."

"Can we get out of here now? 'Cause I'm starving."

"Sure," Dean said, and managed something like a laugh. "You gotta do one thing first, though."

"What?"

"Get all these damn flowers off you. You look like a goddamn hippie."

"Asshole," Sam said, and Dean knew he hadn't come back with a changeling after all.


	5. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Time did weird things in Faerie, apparently, because Sam was adamant that he'd been gone longer than two days and two nights, though he couldn't say for sure how much longer. Long enough to make him really hungry, anyway, so Dean drove out to an all-night diner on the outskirts of Asheville, where he watched with a mix of sympathy and amusement while Sam ordered eggs, toast, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, French toast and a pitcher of iced tea.

"You're going to be puking for a week, you know that, right?"

"I don't care." Sam inhaled a piece of toast and reached for the next one.

"Your funeral," Dean said.

He ordered coffee, and was on his second cup by the time Sam came up for air long enough to speak.

"So, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"How'd you know it was me back there?"

"Why, was it supposed to be difficult?" Dean smirked and gave Sam a few seconds to glare at him, but honestly, he was kind of enjoying the chance to brag. "Truth is, they tried too hard."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That changeling was like a perfect photocopy of you at the moment you disappeared. Nobody goes a whole day -- or more -- without looking at least a tiny bit different. And they'd dolled up Janet in that dress; no way they wouldn't have at least made you comb your hair."

Sam gave him another glare at that, but apparently decided that responding would take away from his valuable eating time.

"So if the changeling wasn't you," Dean continued, "then either you weren't there at all or something else had to be you. And when Her Bitchiness said she'd let us go if I got you to agree..." Dean shrugged. "In the stories, the fairies never ask a riddle unless there's actually an answer. Which meant you were around, and I knew you'd want to go if I asked. So I looked, and you were the only thing in the place that didn't look like a circus freak. Plus, everyone else was backing off from me like I had the plague while you were trying to get close. So that's how I knew. And besides," he grinned, "I'd recognize those Bambi eyes anywhere."

Which was as close as he was ever going to come to saying, "I took one good look at you and I knew, you doofus."

"Hey," Sam said around a mouthful of eggs, "no Bambi jokes."

"Aw, come on! I think I've earned my amusement here. And it really was funny."

"No, it wasn't."

"Admit it, Sam, it was hilarious! You had bells. And daisy chains. And ribbons."

"Shut up."

"_Sparkly_ ribbons, Sam. You were, like, the bastard love child of Bambi and My Little Pony!"

"Argh!" Sam pushed his plate back and slumped forward to rest his head against the table. "Sure," he said in a muffled voice. "Make light of my trauma. I'm scarred for life, and you're laughing."

"Don't be a drama queen."

"I'm going to need therapy till I'm ninety."

"Dude, you're a Winchester. There's not enough therapy in the world, so we learn to suck it up. Stop whining and let me have my fun."

"Can I stop you?"

"No."

"Fine." Sam heaved a resigned sigh. "Go ahead. Get it out of your system."

"Yes, deer."

**The end**


End file.
